“Do you know what you have truly done, Graham?” Amelia asked, her voice tight. “The truth is that you have used me to fulfill your honour while holding me at arms’ length. Appeasing your dukedom while not wanting me. It is terribly awful.”
“If I was only appeasing my dukedom then I would have picked Lady Cassandra, for at least she would have let me be and not expect anything of me!” he shouted. He flinched back, as if his own words struck him. He blinked, his mouth already moving. “Amelia, I did not mean—”
“Do not follow me,” Amelia said, her voice flat. “Leave me alone. I shall make my own way home.”
“Amelia! I do not want Lady—”
“I asked you to leave me!” she all but shouted, her voice a broken, hurt sound. Without another moment wasted, she turned and climbed into their awaiting carriage and slammed the door shut behind her. She ignored the call of her husband, echoing into the night.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The beast inside Graham roared in victory, as if happy to win, while the man who had tried to survive within him since the duel that day sank to the steps of his aunt’s townhouse.
The carriage rode away, and he could see the barest outline of his wife as she disappeared around the corner, and the full weight of what he had snapped in anger hit him. He had just lost something precious. Something truly worthy. For the first time since the duel, Graham recognized loss, and it speared him right through.
“Amelia,” he whispered, knowing he was rooted in place by shame and fear, despite what his sister had told him. How could he keep doubting Amelia? How could his own thoughts turn him from the one good thing he had? He had pushed her away so thoroughly, using the weapon he knew he had against her. Comparing her to the one woman who she had always compared herself to.
Retreating back into the townhouse, Graham stood just inside the drawing room, not bothering to take his place with his family again. He was aware of the stares flickering his way but he did not care. He did not see any of them; he did not hear the music that he now knew, in any other moment, Amelia would have loved. He had not even been able to ask her who her favorite musician had been so far. The melodies floated through the room but they no longer stirred him. He only stared blankly, his expression enough to quell the rest of the gossip swirling through the room.
He spotted Percival in the corner, who watched him with a curious expression but the moment Graham’s eyes landed on him, he plastered on a wide grin that turned Graham’s stomach. In another corner of the room, Lady Cassandra’s eyes were fixed on Graham, too. She twirled a curl around her finger, her head cocked in a way she clearly thought made her pretty. His stomach roiled when he thought of speaking her name against his wife.
Heavenshow could he have been so foolish?
His own awfulness hit him, grounding him in the pain he had caused.
“My friend, your mood is filling up the room.” Owen’s voice startled him for a moment. Graham turned his head to look at his friend. “Will you tell me what happened, and why the Duchess has looked on the verge of tears all night and appears to be absent?”
After a moment, Graham nodded. “Come out here with me,” hesaid quietly. He did not need further eyes on them. Out in the hallway, he pulled Owen aside. “I have been the most terrible husband. I… I doubted Amelia, over and over. She has just angrily, and rightfully so, told me that she has believed me above everybody else but all I have done is cast doubt over her head. I feel wretched. She told me that I am fulfilling my dukedom duties but holding her at arms’ length.”
Owen cringed. “I… I do not think she is wrong, Graham.”
Guilty and ashamed, Graham nodded. “I said something far worse, too. I told her that if I was only doing that then I would have chosen Lady Cassandra to marry.”
“Heavens,” Owen swore. “Graham, yousimpleton. I am sorry but you truly are. How on Earth could you say something like that?”
“I do not know!” Graham insisted. “This is all too much, Owen. Sharing my life with her, the gossip, the never-ending eyes on us even now that we are married! I carry so much pain and I do not know how to keep it at bay most days. I lashed out, I was defensive. I cannot keep doing this. I cannot keep hurting her.”
“No, you cannot,” Owen told him. “She deserves better.”
“Which was why I was upset over the Lord Ambrose rumour.”
“You know yourself that rumours are mere speculation and cannot be further from the truth. Do you truly think your wife wished to be courted by Lord Ambrose?”
“I think she wished to becourted,” Graham said. “And to think she went into the hedge maze longing for that, only to emerge needing to be married to me… it was too much.”
“Youcan court her,” Owen argued. “We have spoken of this.”
“And I have tried but I only push her away. As she said, it is unfair to keep her in this punishing silence but to do anything else is not easy.”
“It is not supposed to be, for that is why, what makes us like that, hurts us so much, for if it was easy to go through then we would come out unscathed. Amelia is not a ghost from your past; she is your wife, and she is herenow. You have something precious with her, Graham. Do not squander it with your own blindness, and that is a threat, for if you do not make amends then I shall drag you out to Hyde Park and duel with you myself for her honour. Not to win her heart, for I am intent on Lady Eleanor’s, but just for her happiness.” Owen’s eyes were wide and intense, his threats clear. Graham waited to flinch, for the threat of a duel to hit him, but it did not. He only stared back at his friend before nodding.
***
Inside the drawing room, Cassandra giggled, and Beatrice could only watch on, guilt heavy in her heart.
“Oh, did you hear?” Cassandra asked one of her ladies. “The Duchess of Blackthorn has fled the townhouse. I wonder if it was guilt that drove her out. Perhaps she is meeting yet another secret lover.”
Beatrice’s eyes lifted to the anguished Duke of Blackthorn, and she rather despised herself for her part in the schemes. At his side, Lord Owen looked pained as he tried to comfort him. The joy she had once felt for her part in meddling in Amelia’s life was gone, and she only sat heavily with the weight of what she had helped to cause.
